Forgiveness Therapy

For­give­ness is the way to keep your­self from becom­ing the vic­tim of your own thoughts. The slights you remem­ber and replay in your head keep you feel­ing bad. What is hard to admit is that you are doing it to your­self. You are feed­ing your­self the echo of a neg­a­tive state­ment. For­give­ness is not just some nice thing to do; it is the ticket to sanity.

Never for­get that it is a fallen world being redeemed. It is between the two par­a­digms of lost and found. Get­ting stuck in the neg­a­tives is pretty mis­er­able. You are not going to bal­ance the scales. There will always be more neg­a­tives than pos­i­tives, so you just remove the neg­a­tives from the scale. Sim­ple. Turn it all loose and let it go. “For­give­ness” is a term that essen­tially means to “toss away.”

Toss it. For­get it. Let it go. Drag­ging what­ever the slight might be is a way of being masochis­tic. Feel­ing bad is a habit of not fill­ing the emo­tional trash can. Carry out the trash. Cleanse the soul. Lighten the load. There is no value in pun­ish­ing your­self via your mem­ory. Drop it.

Healthy reli­gion is about being whole. It is a way of cleans­ing your inner psy­che so that you can be fully human and truly in the image of God. Look around the room. Is the injus­tice still there? No! It is gone. You are the one hang­ing onto it and it strokes the power/ego. Have a bite of hum­ble pie and savor the moment of being free. Mercy trumps justice.

Ther­a­pists talk about a “shadow bag” that peo­ple carry. It is like a trash bag of inequities and injuries that we use to attempt some sort of self-definition. It is filled with all sorts of smelly things. Car­ry­ing it takes work and at least one emotional/spiritual hand. Toss it.

Be free. For­give. Live.